I must say it’s a little wierd being a 44 year old athlete, and being taught swimming by high school kids. But what the hey. The regular teacher was not there last night. He had told me last week he would be there, but told me someone would be.
I got to the pool a little early and was relaxing in the hot tub. A cute girl named Emily asked if I was the student, and I said yeah. She asked me what I wanted to learn and I told her my goal of swimming in an Ironman. She had me get in the pool and show her what I knew. I swam clumsily across the pool. She commented that I wasn’t as bad as she was expecting.
Another girl named Marissa who apparently is another life guard joined in. Soon they were tag-teaming trying to teach me stuff. The lesson unfortunatly was disorganized. I don’t really know what I need to know, so they were trying to teach me everything they could thing of.
I did learn some stuff. I learned that if I try to float or swim on my back, it totally messed up on my equilibrium and I get dizzy, and even a little nausious. So much for the back float. They worked on trying to teach me the breast stroke. I couldn’t seem to get the whip kick part right though. They also touched on the modified side stroke. Emily did give me a few tips on my front crawl though, such as lifting my elbow out of the water in the back, and where to breathe. She also had me try swimming with a snorkle. This did not work out so well. I have snorkled around in the Caribbean. But I think the difference was I had a mask covering my nose. That’s another thing. I want to get a nose plug. I keep getting water in my nose when I swim.
There were points where I was feeling more comfortable in the water while doing a front crawl. I was working on relaxing, and stretching out my stroke to make it longer.
When the hour was done, I showered, changed, and headed home for my 5 mile run.
The lesson was probably not as productive as it could have been. But the girls were very nice. I’ll get this stuff down eventually.

Posted by Rob in Swimming on June 11th, 2008 |